Mucho informacion

So these past couple of days have been filled with so much information I feel like my brain is going to explode. But first I wanted to give a disclaimer: I spend all day listening to and attempting to understand and speak Spanish. So I apologize if some Spanish slips into my posts. I seem to be finding myself having to translate into English what I want to say in these. And I am sorry if my English is bad because all day long I am thinking in Spanish and now English is hard.

Anyways, yesterday we had orientation and talked about what our classes would be like. It was very interesting and we found out that this semester is going to be insane. We have so much homework mixed in with our other experiences we are suppose to have. Monday through Friday I will be at a language school (ICADS) from 8-11. Then on Tuesday and Thursday I will take a bus to the LASP office for our other class from 1-4. Now you may be thinking wow you get a 2 hour break. But it doesn´t work like that. In that 2 hours we have to catch a bus to LASP and the bus ride takes between 1 hour and an hour and a half. We also have to eat lunch. We have this schedule for the next 5 weeks and then we head to Nicaragua. During these 5 weeks we have to do 3 3pg essays in SPanish and then also write 1 5pg essay and 1 8pg research paper. For all of these essays we have interviews we have to complete and other research to do. We also have a group presentation and 4 other smaller projects. It is definately going to be a lot of work.
After orientation, I got to meet a lot of the extended family. We went to the birthday party of one of the aunts of my mami. I met several other aunts and cousins and uncles it was crazy. Then on the bus ride and walk home they told me all sorts of other words and phrases to know. Then today I went to my little brothers soccer practice. That was fun and then the rains came and they had to stop practice. When they said it rained a lot here I had no idea. It rained for 9 hours today. It never stops except for in the morning. By the way the sun rises before 5 am and then the roosters start crowing. It´s a good thing we go to bed early or I would be exhausted all the time. This afternoon I did some homework and got to talk to Jennifer which was really good. I really do miss that girl but we had a really good talk today and so that was nice. Then I went grocery shopping with the family. It was a lot of fun and they taught me more words and phrases and then quizzed me on the ones from lunch today.
Tomorrow my sister Marecela has a bicycle race in another city so we have to leave at 4am to be there in time. I guess it will take 5 hours for her to race so in the meantime we are going to go to the active volcano and then either to the hot springs or to the canopy. So tomorrow is going to be a lot of fun! I can´t wait to see the volcano. I was told by past LASP students that it was really cool.
Hopefully I will get a cord for my camera soon and can post some pictures. I tried the cord the family had but it was too big. They said on Monday they would take me to a store where I can buy one.

Hanging out in San Jose

This morning I woke up to the roosters at 445. That is definately going to take some getting used to. It gets dark here around 730 and light at 5. But we go to bed earlier so I guess its not too terrible. Today we had to meet in the center of San Jose at the teatro nacional for a kind of scavenger hunt to familiarize ourselves with the city. We were divided into groups of six and then given a list of places or things to do. It has been a ton of fun as our group has ventured around the city. We started off this morning at 7 and finished quite a bit of our list by 8 so we decided to just wander around and find things to see. We walked all the way to the end of avenida central and saw the hospital and found a neat park to hang out in. There was a cathedral across the street so we went there after a while of talking about our different host families. We sat in the cathedral for almost 30 min in silence just taking it in. It was absolutely beautiful and it just reminds you how reverent we should be towards God. People would come in and out and kneel down and pray. I´ve been in cathedrals before but this was the first time I actually sat down and really thought about it. I can tell that this trip is really going to challenge my views on religion. Many of the families are catholic so many of the students will be going to catholic churches on Sunday. After we left the cathedral our group just sat outside talking about what it will be like in a catholic church. My family is Pentecostal so that will be an interesting experience for me on Sunday. I can´t wait to share with everyone how that goes. I can´t wait to see how God speaks to me through being pentecostal for 3 months. It will definately be completely different then the church of Christ. After that experience, we walked around a lot more until cafecita at 10 with one of our staff members Laura. I´m definately going to have to learn to like coffee while I am here but it hasn´t been too bad so far. Everyday Costa Ricas have cafecita which is a time to gather around the table to have coffee and pastries. During our cafecita we got to ask Laura all sorts of questions that have come up so far like what our schedules will be like these next couple of weeks, and where will we stay in Nicaragua and Cuba, and do you have to throw the toilet paper in the trash can in public restrooms. She was very helpful and it was a nice hour spent enjoying cafecita. I got a drink called choco vienna which had chocolate, coffee, and ice cream. It was so sweet I could hardly finish it. After that we found a bank to change some of our US dollars into colones and then we had to find an internet cafe so that is where I am now. In about 30 minutes we will hop on a bus to go to ICADS. That is the place where we will be taking our Spanish classes every morning. Today we have to go take our test to see what level we will be in. After that we are heading to the mall for the final step on our scavenger hunt. Then it is back to teatro nacional at 5 to meet our host moms and go home. This trip has been so full of emotions and it is definately draining. Listening to and speaking Spanish all day wears you out while we are still getting used to it. It´s been nice this afternoon to get to speak a little English. Since my house has internet access, hopefully I will be updating this thing often so keep checking it. I did leave my camera cord at home so hopefully I can find one to buy or else there will be no picture...sorry. Maybe I can download some from my host moms camera. She went picture crazy last night and took a whole bunch of pictures of me and my sisters. It was a lot of fun. Well that is all for now because it is time to go on a search for the correct bus. I love you all!!

I made it!!

I am finally in Costa Rica and settled in with my new family. They are a big family just like mine so it is nice. They have 5 kids that range from 10-24. They are so nice and help me so much with my Spanish. If I can´t understand what they said the first time, they repeat it over and over again until I get it. This trip has already been filled with so many emotions and it feels like I have been here forever. But I have to get up at 5am so I am going to bed but I will try to post more tomorrow!

Miami

So after a long day of being in the airport, I finally made it to Miami. Everything was okay until I got to Atlanta, and then I found out that my flight to Miami had been canceled due to the weather. So I had to stand in a long line to get reassigned to a new plane. When I finally did, it wasn't scheduled to leave until Tuesday which would mean I would have to spend the night in the airport. So they told me that I could fly standby on a couple other flights they had going to Miami tonight. I waited in line for my name to get called and finally the last flight of the night, which left at 10, I finally heard my name and got to get on the plane. Let's just say I spent a lot of time in the Atlanta airport today. But my hotel is pretty sweet and it is just nice to not have to sleep in the airport. It's kinda lonely though. I think this is the first time I've ever been in a hotel by myself and I have no one to go exploring with and this would be a cool hotel to explore! Tomorrow I get to meet the group I am traveling with and fly to Costa Rica. We are staying at some retreat house tomorrow night so that we can have orientation and then I think on Wednesday we get to meet our host families. I am super excited about that. But since I pulled an allnighter last night packing, I am going to go get some sleep. I miss all of you already and I can't wait to share Costa Rica with you guys.
Goodnight!

First Blog

So I've never set up a blog before so we will have to see how this goes....hopefully it works and everyone can see this. I'm going to try to post on this thing as often as possible while I am in Costa Rica. Hopefully I can keep in touch with all of you through this. I'm going to miss everyone!